2018 Consolidated Plan Second Informal Input Session

2018 Consolidated Plan Second Informal Input Session

HOME, National HTF, and HOPWA

August 16, 2017 at 1:00 p.m.

As of this date, OHFA has not developed proposed Action Plans for the use of the State’s 2018 HOME, HTF or HOPWA funds allocations. All ideas will be considered and all comments are welcome. Drafts of these Action Plans will be submitted to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce (ODOC) by September 19th. ODOC is the lead agency for the Consolidated Planning Process.

2018 will be the first year of a new Five-Year Consolidated Plan. This input session will cover potential changes to HOME, HTF and HOPWA for the 2018 Program Year. Comments and suggestions regarding the Five-Year Plan in general may be submitted to Mr. Steven Hoover at ODOC. OHFA can provide contact information if needed.

It now appears that the HOME Program will receive the same funding from Congress in 2018 as in 2017. This is good news, since it previously appeared that the funding would be reduced. The proposed funding for HOPWA is also the same as 2017, or perhaps slightly higher. Based on this, the State’s total HOME Allocation for 2018 would be about $5.6 million. The HOPWA Allocation would be about $260,000. The National HTF is funded by required contributions from FNMA and FHLMC, and therefore the total for 2018 is unknown at this time. However, OHFA does not anticipate that enough funds will be collected such that the State will receive more than the state minimum $3 million.

OHFA has a few proposed changes for 2018 for the HOME Program, but not many. OHFA is not proposing any changes to the HOPWA and HTF Programs. At this public input session we are open to any comments and suggestions about any of the programs. None of the proposed changes are final:

· OHFA proposes to increase the number of points for Leverage to 10 from the current 5. This is to further encourage the use of other sources of funds in partnership with HOME. We need to find some way to stretch the limited HOME funds further.

· The HOME Per-Unit Subsidy limits are fairly high. For HOME only, we are proposing to provide 5 points for Applications that have per unit costs at least ten percent (10%) below the Limits. This only applies to the HOME subsidy per unit and not the total costs per unit, although we encourage HOME Program participants to keep per unit costs down as much as reasonably possible. The minimum 10% would be across the board for all unit sizes in the proposed Project.

· We are proposing to limit any particular entity, organization, developer, etc. to no more than three (3) open Projects at one time. Projects will be considered no longer open once the close-out documentation has been submitted to OHFA, and not the date they are closed out in IDIS.

· We plan to maintain the current Bonus Points for the 19 counties as identified in the Statewide Housing Needs Assessment, but we continue to solicit input on other ways to direct the resources to the areas of greatest need.

This is the last of the informal input sessions on the HOME, HTF and HOPWA Programs. However, there will be two formal opportunities to provide input into the entire 2018 Consolidated Plan for the State of Oklahoma: